


Inclinations, Leverage, Pullulation

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Community: criticalkink, Community: trope_bingo, Critical Role Kink Meme, Demisexual Character, Fix-it fic, Hurt/Comfort, Implied homophobia, Kink Meme, M/M, Robot Kink, Robot Sex, Robot/Human Relationships, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-11-29 00:27:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11429385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: Tary has a mishap with Doty, but Lawrence is there to make him feel better.Porn with a touch of plot. Fix-it fic for canon homophobia. Please read the tags and consider your kinks and squicks before reading.





	Inclinations, Leverage, Pullulation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afullmargin (anemptymargin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anemptymargin/gifts).



> _Critical Role_ characters do not belong to me and I am making no financial profit off this work of fan fiction. I know we're way past disclaimers at this point but I am a Fandom Old. Originally posted to the kmeme [here](http://criticalkink.dreamwidth.org/700.html?thread=339388#cmt339388)
> 
> * * *

Tary has half an hour before his tutor arrives and so he closes the door between his study and his bedroom, ordering Doty onto the bed with a certain degree of guilt. Doty is his friend, his confidante, built from an outlandish idea and long hours of labor. He’s not meant for this sordid purpose, this... this reason that Tary had to reinforce the base of his bed.

He sheds his clothes in a hurry, retaining his blue silk shirt for a modicum of modesty, although his cock jutting out from beneath the hem makes a mockery of the notion. He knows the special places to touch on Doty so that the featureless plate between Doty’s legs slides open to reveal the smooth slender cylinder that Tary has taken great care in installing. A second touch and a circle irises open in Doty’s thick palm.

Quickly, aware of the time but more so of his own growing need, Tary kneels on the bed beside Doty, positioning him just so before stroking a fine layer of clear oil over Doty’s hand and phallus. His hand shakes as he pushes two fingers inside of himself, coated in the same slick oil, applying it generously to ease the way.

He doesn’t need to open himself up; Doty can do that for him.

Tary straddles Doty and sinks down onto the slim column, biting his lip against a cry as it slips into him. He pulls Doty’s hand to himself, sliding his cock through the hole. His movements become more eager as he settles everything the way that he likes it.

At last, the commands.

“Doty, stroke me, ten percent vibration... and another fifty percent thickness.”

Doty’s movements are jerky, but the thrill of sensation through Tary’s body from the thickening of the phallus inside him as it ratchets wider, and the low vibration around his cock make it mostly possible to ignore the fact that this isn’t with a living, breathing person.

Tary begins riding Doty, having learned the hard way that a thrusting mechanism is too unpredictable. He watches the length of his cock as it slips through the hole in Doty’s hand and calls for the hand to move faster, for the cylinder within him to expand again. He renews the slick oil, tilting the vial and letting it drizzle freely over his cock before reaching down to smear more over Doty’s phallus.

He longs for a human touch. He and his tutor have shared kisses and caresses, but nothing to this extent. Lawrence says it would be a breach of the trust that Howaardt Darrington has placed in him as a teacher of his child, and disrespectful to Howaardt’s insistence that both Taryon and Maryanne remain unspoiled until marriage.

Mind you, as Lawrence usually says this while groping Tary’s ass to pull them closer together as he whispers his guilt against Tary’s parted lips, Tary’s never been convinced.

The thought of Lawrence touching him makes Tary’s cock twitch and shudder in the familiar cool palm of Doty’s hand. How he longs to be thirty, only a scant few years away, when his father will trust him to be wed and Lawrence can openly love him. Yes, love—they have spoken the word in the heat of desire and, though Tary loves Doty, that’s one thing that Doty cannot do for him.

If he can’t have loving warmth and true emotions from Doty, though, he can at least have this.

“Doty—thicker by fifty percent—oh, _fuck_ —and—tighten your hand ten percent—increase vibration to twenty-five percent—”

This would be so fascinating with Lawrence. Lawrence under him like this, hips rising to meet Tary grinding down against him. Lawrence taking him over the solid mahogany desk in the study, Tary’s cock smearing fluid lewdly over the leather surface as Lawrence rocks into him and back, in and back. Bared to each other at least, instead of their mostly clothed fumblings. Tary’s always feared that Lawrence considers him to be too immature for more, despite his age.

A mixture of fluids is dripping from his cock down Doty’s hand and forearm now, and Tary throws his head back, breathing reduced to erratic gasps, feeling his orgasm about to hit him—

—and then Doty _stops_.

“Doty?”

The regular hum of the vibration around Tary’s cock has halted. Doty’s hand no longer moves along Tary’s length. The solid and now quite thick column buried within him remains at its existing state instead of shrinking and retracting as it is supposed to do if something goes awry.

Furthermore, Tary’s cock is stuck.

“Oh, no, no, no...”

If he can come he can slip his softened cock out of Doty’s grasp, lift himself off Doty’s phallus, and be free if a little red-faced when Lawrence arrives for his lesson.

Tary reaches down to stroke himself to completion, groaning softly at the sudden deep awareness of being filled and surrounded by metal. It at once seems ridiculous and further arousing; how many people can say they’ve built a companion so perfectly made to fit them? His cock throbs in Doty’s hand, the formerly pleasantly tight circle now an enclosing cage.

Doty’s hand is positioned just wrong for Tary to work his own hand in there.

Still, all is not lost. Surely he can move Doty’s arm back, if he tries—

“ _Ow_!”

Doty’s elbow is locked in place. His arms won’t move, and Tary still can’t get his fingers anywhere useful.

The only other thing he can come up with is to decrease his feeling of arousal. He tries to hold still, to avoid any further friction either around or within himself that might keep him hard. Then he reaches for the actively repulsive memory of Maryanne barging into his study soaked in sweat from some revolting sporting activity and putting him in a headlock, scrubbing her knuckles roughly into his hair.

An easy enough recollection—it only happened last week.

Tary’s cock is beginning to soften, even with the pressure of Doty in and around him, and he’s starting to think he might get out in once piece—

“Tary?”

Blood rushes to Tary’s cock and cheeks simultaneously.

It’s Lawrence.

Lawrence in the study, a few minutes early for their lesson; Lawrence terrifyingly close to the bedroom door. Tary holds his breath, tries to pretend he isn’t there, but his left calf chooses that moment to knot up and he lets out a helpless yelp of pain.

“ _Tary_?”

“Don’t come in,” Tary says, but Lawrence has already cracked the door open ( _why_ didn’t he lock it? _Why_?) and is peering into the room.

To his credit, he doesn’t laugh. Not immediately, anyway. Instead he enters the room, closing the door behind himself, and moves to stand by the bed.  In the lamplight he is tall and handsome, tunic and trousers fitted just right to his muscular frame. Maryanne has often complained that he would make a better sportsmaster than wasting his body on boring old philosophy.

Tary has refrained for telling her exactly why Lawrence would have no interest in her and her sports.

“Taryon, what on Exandria are you doing?”

“I’m not sure I can explain.”

“I’m reasonably certain you _can_ , but I won’t ask again.” Lawrence examines his predicament more closely. “Can’t you back off of him?”

“I—no.”

Lawrence doesn’t ask why not. He just takes up the vial of oil, sniffing it briefly with a smile of recognition before dripping more over Tary’s cock. Then he grips Doty’s wrist and pulls, careful and steady. Doty’s elbow grinds in complaint, but his arm moves enough that Tary’s cock—still hard, now sore—slides free from Doty’s hold at last.

Tary lifts up off the solid column of Doty’s phallus, tries to give Lawrence a winning smile, and keels over sideways onto the bed as his left calf resigns in disgust.

“Oh, Tary.” Lawrence is around the bed in a second, despite how vast it is (Tary has occasionally wondered just how many wives his father expects him to have). “Look at you. You poor thing.” He scoops Tary up and moves him so his head rests on a soft pillow before sitting beside him and digging his thumbs into the now quite badly cramping muscle of his calf. “Hush, darling,” he murmurs as Tary whimpers. “There you go... just relax...”

Tary’s trying not to sob with pain or with anything else, but having Lawrence’s hands on him are bringing his abused cock back to full attention, which _hurts_.

“Better?” Lawrence rubs his palm over Tary’s calf.

“That is, yes,” Tary says, flustered and not quite sure where to go from here.

Lawrence’s gaze dances the length of Tary’s mostly bare body, lingering on his chest bared between the wings of dark blue silk and—of course—on his cock. But then he turns his attention to Doty.

“Have you done this before?”

“Yes,” Tary says. “Only without the—difficulty.”

“I should think someone would have noticed by now if you’d been having this kind of mishap on a regular basis.” Lawrence touches Doty’s hand, wrist, and elbow. “Poor Doty seems to have suffered some kind of fluid damage.”

“I didn’t use any more than usual,” Tary protests.

“Are you sure?” Lawrence runs a finger through one long streak and holds it up, gleaming. “There’s an awful lot of oil here... and more besides that. Were you thinking about something more intense than usual.”

Tary closes his eyes and shivers. “Maybe.”

He feels the bed shift under Lawrence’s weight. “Look at me, Tary.”

Tary opens his eyes again, looking up into Lawrence’s steady gaze. There he sees only compassion, tempered perhaps by amusement and something else he’s only seen in their most intense sessions together. Lawrence is kneeling between Tary’s thighs, upper body held over Tary’s by those strong arms that Maryanne is so jealous of. His breath touches Tary’s lips like the softest kiss.

“What were you thinking about, to be so dripping wet that Doty froze up like that?” he asks again, and this time Tary answers with the truth.

“You. I was thinking about—about being with you like that, instead of using poor Doty. I can’t lie, he makes me feel amazing... but nothing like I imagine it would feel with you.” He feels his cheeks and neck turning red with the force of his blush.

“We’ve talked about this before.” Lawrence’s tone is forbidding, but there’s still that warm light in his eyes.

“I know.” Tary would hang his head if he could, but all he can do is duck his chin a little. “I’m not _of age_ yet.” He means to spit the words with anger, but they just come out miserable. “I can’t imagine any other family makes its scions wait until age thirty before judging them mature enough to—to do anything responsible!”

“I can’t imagine your father actually thinks the only thing Maryanne rides in the stables is the horses,” Lawrence says.

“What do you—”

“I mean,” Lawrence says, “that if she can get away with it, and she’s younger than you, then I’m quite certain your father will understand that you know your own mind.”

And then Lawrence’s lips are on his, not soft and hesitant as they would usually be before desire casts caution to the wind, but hot and hungry, as though they have begun in the middle. Which they have, in a way. Beyond the middle, even.

Tary stops trying to think in terms of linear time and kisses Lawrence back, hands lifting to sink into Lawrence’s perfect hair, just long enough to wind his fingers in. The front of Lawrence’s tunic brushes against Tary’s cock and he lets out an involuntary sound of pain.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Lawrence lifts up off him and looks down at his cock. “Oh, darling, you really _are_ hurting, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Tary admits, although he doesn’t want this to stop.

“Oh, Tary.” Lawrence kisses him again, dialing it back a notch to make it softer, sweeter. “It’ll be all right.”

Tary’s not quite sure what that’s supposed to mean, but then Lawrence’s mouth moves from his lips to his neck, kissing and licking. Down to his chest, one hand spreading the shirt all the way open, and when Lawrence sucks one of Tary’s taut nipples into his mouth Tary gasps loudly. Lawrence lifts up long enough to shed his tunic and comes back down to press his bare chest against Tary’s. They’ve gotten this far before, albeit with Tary’s trousers still on; from here on out it’s unfamiliar territory.

Except Lawrence knows the way.

His mouth blazes a hot trail down Tary’s body, kissing his chest and the small curve of his belly and each of his thighs. He moves to lie between Tary’s thighs, and his cheek brushes against Tary’s cock, making Tary’s body shiver harder than ever.

“All right?” Lawrence asks, breath tickling Tary’s cock like a promise.

“Be gentle,” Tary says, feeling foolish and younger than ever.

“Of course.”

Lawrence keeps kissing his thighs for a good while longer, coming closer and closer in until Tary lets out a whine not of pain but of impatient desire. He feels the curve of Lawrence’s smile against his skin, the push of Lawrence’s nose through the tight golden curls around the base of his cock, and hears the sound of a lengthy inhale followed by an appreciative, “Mmmm.”

Then Lawrence’s tongue is on him, tracing the underside of his cock from base to head, gathering the taste of him up, and Tary is gasping for breath almost immediately.

“Oh! Oh, gods—”

Lawrence licks him again and then begins dotting small kisses over his hot skin. Tary can hardly stand it, so gentle and so powerful at the same time. He can feel the drawing in of pressure signaling his impending climax.

“It’s quite all right if you come fast the first time,” Lawrence remarks quite casually between licks and kisses. “Just warn me.”

“So you can move away?”

“No.” Lawrence looks up and winks at him. “So I can do this.” And he takes Tary’s length into his mouth, all the way in a practiced prolonged _suck_.

Tary doesn’t have time to warn him, but he has the feeling that Lawrence knew all along.

“There, now.” Lawrence licks his lips and moves to lie alongside Tary, curling an arm around his shoulders. That he can do this without bumping into Doty is a reminder of the bed’s enormous size. “Next time will be slower, but that was lovely.”

“Next time,” Tary echoes with an idiotic grin. And then: “Lovely?”

“For me, yes,” Lawrence says. His erection is pressing against Tary’s hip. “So lovely to feel you come all the way apart for me at last. I’ve been longing to do that to you for months and months.”

“Can I—should I do it back?”

“I think we should stick to things you’re more familiar with, first.” Lawrence guides Tary’s hand to the front of his trousers. “Like—yes.” Tary’s palm moves knowingly to stroke Lawrence through the frankly quite flimsy linen. “Oh, _yes_.”

“Take them off,” Tary says, voice shaking but certain. “I want to see.”

Lawrence is only too happy to shed his trousers, kicking them off the bed. Tary moves back enough to get a full view of Lawrence’s body. The hair on his chest and around his cock is darker than the hair on his head, and the trail between his navel and the thicker triangle of hair below draws a clear arrow that Tary’s only too happy to follow.

He only barely has his hand around Lawrence’s cock before Lawrence groans loudly.

“Is that—did I do something wrong?”

Lawrence’s hand closes around his and squeezes. “No. Not at all. Just been thinking of this a long time. Don’t stop. Please.”

Tary begins moving his hand, the angle odd as they’re face to face but otherwise it’s not an unfamiliar gesture; he’s spent plenty of nights alone in this bed in the company of his own hand. He lets Lawrence’s moans and the way that his body moves guide him in terms of the best places and speed and so forth.

Before too long—although longer than Tary himself lasted—Lawrence is unmistakably close to coming: he’s biting his lip, his face and neck and chest flushed red, and his cock is dripping over Tary’s hand.

“Stop, Tary.”

Tary gives him a bewildered look but lifts his hand away immediately. Obeying orders comes readily to him.

“How are you feeling inside?” Lawrence asks.

“What do you—oh. _Oh_.” Tary considers the question and its implications. His cock expresses its interest, growing to half-hardness. “I think I’m all right.”

“Are you sure? Because if you’re just saying it to please me—”

“I’m not,” Tary interrupts. “I’m not saying it just to please you and I’m not sore and I feel all right and I really _really_ want to feel you inside me. Please,” he adds belatedly.

Lawrence smiles, this time almost shyly, and rolls onto his back. “Then I trust you know what to do.”

Tary reaches for a second vial of oil, the first almost exhausted, and pours some into the palm of his hand, letting it warm a little as he would if he were using it for his solitary pleasure. When he begins stroking it onto Lawrence, Lawrence’s whole body goes rigid and he lets out a deep groan.

“I won’t last long if you tease.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

Lawrence’s eyes are half-lidded with desire. “Perhaps you should tend to yourself next. You do have to take me as I am; I can’t slim down to fit inside you.”

Tary’s cock jerks hard at the words, and harder still as Tary pushes two fingers inside himself. He’s still somewhat wet and open, but Lawrence clearly enjoys watching him, so he drags it out a little longer, closing his eyes and letting out a few breathy sounds as he finds the sweet spot inside himself and circles it with the tip of one finger until his cock is fully hard once more.

Lawrence shifts up the bed, leaning against the pillows, squeezing the base of his cock with encircled thumb and forefinger. “Gods, you’re beautiful.”

“No, you are.”

“Both of us, then. Come up here.” Lawrence doesn’t need to pat his lap suggestively for Tary to go to him, but he does it anyway.

Lawrence is right; he can’t slim down to fit inside Tary. He’s not as thick as Tary has sometimes ordered Doty to be, but he’s not small either, and his flesh shifts and slips annoyingly in a way that Doty’s sturdy shaft doesn’t. Tary lets out a small sound of frustration, and Lawrence laughs softly.

“Here.” His hand reaches under Tary’s buttocks, squeezing one briefly before—oh, like _that_ , Tary feels the head of Lawrence’s cock press against and then into him and—

Lawrence’s hands go to his hips, guiding him, and Tary sinks down onto warm, willing flesh, feeling the _aliveness_ of Lawrence’s cock inside him.

“Easy, easy does it,” Lawrence is saying, but now that Tary’s taken a little he wants it all and moves his hips greedily, and Lawrence stops telling him to be careful in favor of gripping his hips tighter and thrusting up into him.

“Oh gods. Oh, that’s what I want,” Tary babbles. “He can’t move like this but you can and oh, _fuck_ , Lawrence, _more_.”

“More,” Lawrence agrees, and he holds Tary tighter still, fucking up into him, making Tary squeal at the sudden intensity. “Like this? Yes, like this… I can see on your face how much you like this, you gorgeous man. You going to come from this?”

“Oh—uh—maybe?”

“I’d love to see you…” Lawrence releases Tary’s hip for a moment and takes Tary’s right hand, guiding it to Tary’s cock—not that he needs much guidance once he realizes Lawrence’s intention. “Go on… let me see how you get yourself off at night when you’re thinking about me.” Then both of his hands are on Tary’s ass, holding him close as he continues thrusting up into Tary. His movements are both smoother and more unpredictable than Doty’s, and Tary feels quite delirious.

Tary cautiously strokes his cock from base to head, wary of his earlier entrapment, alleviated as it was by Lawrence’s delightful mouth. Now it feels nothing but pleasurable.

“That’s it.” Lawrence’s voice is uneven. “That’s my Tary.”

“Yours,” Tary agrees dizzily. He rests his forehead on Lawrence’s, both of them looking down at Tary fisting his cock, at where Lawrence’s length is buried inside Tary. “Yours, Lawrence, at _last_ —”

“Did you think about me like this?”

“Yes.”

“What else?”

“Desk in the study,” Tary gasps, feeling Lawrence’s rhythm falter and then resume faster. “You bending me over it.” Lawrence curses under his breath. “Leaning hard against me to keep me steady so you could—you could—”

“Fuck you.”

“Yes. That.”

“Like right now.” Lawrence’s eyes have a wild light in them, a light of which Tary has only seen the briefest spark before. “Fucking you good right now.” His scholarly eloquence is gone. “Going to come in you… _he_ can’t do that for you.”

“No—he can’t—Lawrence, _please_ —”

“For you, Tary,” Lawrence says in a comparatively gentle tone, even as his fingers tighten to the point of pain in Tary’s buttocks and his cock pulses deep inside Tary, most assuredly a sensation that Doty cannot replicate. Tary’s own cock jerks and stripes his hand and Lawrence’s chest with his seed, and the two of them cry out together, Tary collapsing against Lawrence’s shoulder.

And that is when Howaardt Darrington opens the still damned unlocked door.

“Taryon!” His voice cracks across Tary’s bedchamber. “Lawrence! What are you—”

His gaze lands upon them, turning from mild anger to profound anger, and then turns to Doty, metal phallus currently spearing nothing but air, and Howaardt’s face goes apoplectic red.

“You _filthy perverts_!”

Tary cringes. Lawrence shifts Tary off him with remarkable ease and puts himself between the two Darringtons, clad in nothing but his skin. Tary admires his courage (and, admittedly, his ass).

“Homosexuality is a perfectly natural state of being for a human, sir, and—”

“I could _not_ care less about the two of you. Aside from the broken promises and the inherent violation of the trust I put in you as a teacher of literature, not of lasciviousness.” Howaardt jabs a finger in the direction of Doty. “It’s _that_. I knew letting you build it was a mistake, you disgusting little boy.”

“He’s not a boy, he’s a man,” Lawrence objects.

“Doty’s not an it, he’s a he,” Tary says.

“I can see perfectly well why you think that! How _dare_ you spend _my_ money and resources to build yourself a—a _sexual automaton_! You told me you were creating a teaching aid!”

“He did teach me rather a lot,” Tary begins.

If Howaardt’s face were apoplectic before, now it’s a downright apocalypse. “ _Be quiet_!” He looks at Lawrence. “You. Get out. You have fifteen minutes to be gone from my domicile forever.”

“But—”

“Taryon, I said _be quiet_!”

Lawrence turns to Tary, cups his face in his hands, and gives him a tender kiss. “I will find you again,” he whispers. “I’m not going to let us end here.”

“ _Out_!”

Lawrence gathers his clothing and flees the room, leaving nothing between Tary and his father but Doty’s rigid body.

Son and father regard each other for a long moment. Tary is miserably aware of how bad he must look, streaked with fluids, hair a mess, thoroughly debauched.

“You too,” Howaardt says, his anger turned down to a low simmer.

Tary looks at Doty, bewildered. “Us two what?”

“You. _Also_. I want you gone, Tary. I will give you three days to pack and prepare whatever you need, and then I don’t want to see you back here until you’ve grown the hell up.”

“Father, I—”

“Shut up! Three days. Ask the kitchens for food, ask the stablehands for a horse, whatever you need, but I want you _gone_.”

“Can I take Doty?” Tary asks tentatively.

Howaardt boils over again. “Yes! Yes, gods damn it! Take the automaton! Is there anything _else_ in here you’ve perverted for your own pleasure? Take the bedposts! Take the bloody fireplace poker! Just. Get. Out. Of. My. _House_!”

The door slams behind him as he storms out.

Tary gets to his shaking legs and stumbles to the door, finally locking it. He returns to the bed, where such a short time ago he was enjoying the profoundest pleasure of his life, and curls into a ball.

He spends the first three hours of his three days weeping into his pillow, which still smells like Lawrence’s pomade.

***

By the end of Tary’s tale of woe Vex is in mild hysterics, despite her solemn promise to listen quietly and show respect to her best friend and housemate.

“Oh, darling!” She dashes tears of mirth from her eyes with her sleeve, and squeezes Tary’s hand sympathetically. They’re out in the garden, the two of them sitting in the lime tree arbor, Doty 2.0 standing nearby composing a poem about the night sky—or at least taking very detailed notes as he gazes up at it.

“I thought you weren’t going to laugh,” Tary huffs. “You _promised_.”

“That was before I knew you got your dick stuck in a robot.”

“Vex’ahlia, a Baroness shouldn’t be so crude.”

“Forget that... did you fix him? You must have fixed him. I don’t remember seeing a giant _phallus_ when we first met him.” She glances over at Doty 2.0, who is placidly scribbling away, oblivious to the swarm of small biting insects hovering around his head, attracted to the glow of his eyes.

“I fixed him before I left my father’s house. It took most of the three days, but I wasn’t leaving without him.”

Vex sighs and slings her arm around his shoulders. They’re sitting on a wooden swinging bench that Pike’s great-great-grandfather made for Vex as a housewarming present. “Did your father not show any change of heart during the three days?”

“He did not. He locked himself away in his office and refused to talk to the family until I was gone. My mother begged with him through the door. My sister just sneered at me and told me to pack faster.”

“Oh, Tary.” Her tone implies _families can be real shitbags_.

In the seven or so months they’ve been living together Vex has told him a lot about her younger life, and Tary’s glad that he reciprocated. It seems like the right thing for good friends to do. Even if she did laugh.

“Didn’t you tell us that you were only twenty when it happened?”

“I didn’t want you to think I was still so inexperienced in my mid-twenties.”

Vex gurgles laughter. “Darling, you’re twenty-nine now and we _know_ you’re inexperienced.”

Tary can’t even pretend to be offended. He knows he’s not as—ah—prolifically versed in the arts of physical love as the others. Beyond Lawrence, he can’t imagine having a sexual interest in any other man.

It’s something that he and Keyleth can talk about, at least. Not her sexual attraction to Lawrence, of course, because she has never met him. But her lack of sexual interest in general. And they don’t really talk about it so much as Keyleth might ask him of one man or another, “Do you think he’s handsome?”, Tary will answer with a yes or a no, and then they’ll go right back to whatever else it was they were discussing, comfortable with their mutual indifference.

He nurses a small attraction to Percival, but knows that the woman currently leaning against him, pushing at the ground with her bare toes to make the bench swing creakily, would have words to say to him about that, and most of them would be _don’t_.

( _Don’t try it again. Don’t get that drunk again. Don’t get_ him _that drunk again. Don’t let me catch you two dry-humping in the workshop again. Don’t let me stand there in the doorway, jaw ajar, uncomfortable and yet aroused by the sight of my lover’s dexterous hands gripping your shapely ass as you grind against him, the two of you kissing sloppily with the smell of whiskey on the air. Don’t let the two of you realize I’m there and turn to give me that guilty look. And especially don’t hold out a hand toward me as though inviting me to join you—no, I know you’re not that way inclined, Tary, although the thought of being caught between your strong, manly body and Percy’s lithe, lean body is_ so _appealing—_ )

“Whatever you think I’m thinking, I’m not,” Vex says, pinching his earlobe.

“Ow. What _are_ you thinking, then?”

“Do you ever lend him out?”

“Vex’ahlia! My dear little elf girl, if you think I’ve modified Doty 2.0 in the same misguided way as the Taryon of yesteryear did, then you’re gravely mistaken. Besides, I wouldn’t want to impugn Percival’s honor.”

“I’m sure he’d live.”

“Besides, Doty only listens to _me_.”

“I wasn’t interested in him for his listening abilities.”

“Vex! No!”

Vex laughs and flicks his ear, standing up. “All right, all right. Don’t stay out here too long, daydreamer. It’s getting late.”

“Doesn’t that make me a _night_ dreamer?” Tary counters.

“Good _night_ , Taryon.” And she’s off to the back entrance of the house—small mansion, really—that they share. Tary wonders briefly, as he often does, why she doesn’t live up at Whitestone Castle, but then remembers, as he always does, just how much Vex values her independence.

He lingers in the garden long enough to see the lamps go on in the training arena at the top of the mansion. Covered with a semi-opaque glass dome—one pane of which is still cracked from a Grog-and-Pike mishap—it’s full of bars and ladders and ropes rather than punching bags and free weights, except if Grog makes an improvised free weight out of a gnome cleric.

Vex is a shadow ascending one of the ladders then leaping for a trapeze. A second shadow at floor level is Percival, acting as her spotter. He’d better do a good job of it, because if Vex hurts herself from something as stupid as a twenty-foot fall off a tightrope due to her spotter being too preoccupied with the physics of gun ballistics rather than the physics of the woman swinging over his head, Tary’s going to go up there and put Percy’s head through one of the windows.

Well. He’d have to get Doty to do it, but the thought is what counts.

“Doty?” He’s never been able to call him Doty 2.0 to his face. He doesn’t want Doty feeling like a mere replacement for someone beloved lost to him.

“Tary,” Doty responds.

“Let’s go to bed.”

“Tary.”

The two of them walk inside. Tary’s quarters are on the ground floor: bathroom off the bedroom, bedroom off the study, and workshop access from the study through a short passage with solid doors at either end due to the fact that this is the second workshop at this address and they keep finding bits of the old one in the most unlikely places.

He locks the study door and the bedroom door behind himself.

After Tary bathes and dries his hair, Doty brushes it out patiently, saying “Tary” every ten strokes to keep count. Tary marvels at the nuance in his voice. Although he can only speak one word—such are the limitations of the magical spell—it seems to him that his name comes out of Doty’s mouth with a wide range of tones and degrees of emotion.

He leans back against Doty as Doty runs the brush through his hair. Doty is still cool to the touch—he hasn’t figured out a substitute skin yet, and heating the metal directly has predictably terrible results—but is comfortingly solid.

When Tary’s hair is done he feels loose-limbed, almost floating away, anchored only by one particularly demanding part of his body. He has a solution for that, and he refuses to feel guilty about shading the truth with Vex. After all, he _didn’t_ make the same modifications to Doty 2.0.

“Doty, kneel for me, please.”

“Tary,” Doty replies obligingly, going to his knees beside the bed, between Tary’s spread thighs.

Tary fits the rubber sheath within Doty’s mouth, fussing until it’s just so, aware of the supreme awkwardness that would result if Doty suffers fluid damage again around anyone who knows his secret tale. He flips open the small panel behind Doty’s ear and presses a button, checking the seal on the sheath and locking Doty’s jaw open. Perfect. A few more adjustments and Doty’s head is bowed to where Tary needs it most right now.

“Doty?”

“Tary?” The word is garbled thanks to Doty’s parted lips and the sheath in his mouth, but Tary likes to think that his tone is eager to please.

“Take me down.”

**Author's Note:**

> inclinations, n. a characteristic likelihood of or natural disposition toward a certain condition or character or effect
> 
> leverage, n. holding the advantage in a situation or the stronger position in a contest, physical or otherwise
> 
> pullulation, n. asexual reproduction in which a local growth on the surface or in the body of the parent becomes a separate individual


End file.
